What exactly does ./configure --enable-shared do during python altinstall?

Question

When I altinstall python 2.7.12 with

./configure --prefix=/opt/python --enable-shared

it comes up as python 2.7.5 (system default python

Answer 1

I'm not sure why the version number is different, but Graham Dumpleton says at this website that "When running configure, you should be supplying the --enable-shared option to ensure that shared libraries are built for Python. By not doing this you are preventing any application which wants to use Python as an embedded environment from working."